Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an emerging technology that leverages electronic data and wireless communication for identification purposes and can be utilized with systems from secure internet payment systems to industrial automation and access control systems. With RFID systems, electronic data typically is stored within an RFID tag, which can be formed from a small silicon chip and one or more antennas, and affixed to a product. Reading from and/or writing to an RFID tag can be achieved through radio frequency (RF) based wireless communication via devices referred to as RFID readers. In general, writing is utilized to add and/or modify product specific information to an RFID tag, and reading is utilized to retrieve the information, for example, to provide for automatic product identification. In many instances, the electronic data written to and/or read from an RFID tag includes an Electronic Product Code (EPC), which, in general, is a unique number that is encoded (e.g., as a bit code) and embedded within the RFID tag. Typical EPC data can include information about the product (e.g., product type, date of manufacture, lot number, etc.) and/or associated cases, pallets, and/or container levels, for example.
When passed through or scanned by a reader, an RFID tag emits stored electronic data such that the data can be retrieved by an RFID reader without unpacking the product or scanning barcode labels. Read information can be utilized to provide a greater degree of certainty over what goes into a supply chain and/or how to manage raw materials, warehouse inventory, shipments, logistics, and/or various other aspects of manufacturing. Conventionally, RFID readers convey electronic data obtained from RFID tags to a PC based server (e.g., the Savant-like server) that performs data filtering and management and provides interfaces to other Enterprise Applications.
As note above, RFID technology can be utilized in industrial automation systems. An example of such a system is agent-based manufacturing control systems, which are evolving into robust control systems for large series production control systems. In general, an agent-based control system is a community of autonomous, intelligent computational units referred to as agents. Respective agents typically are responsible for local decision making and control of one or more explicit parts of a manufacturing process. A key element in such a system is cooperation among the agents in order to provide a desirable global behavior of controlled systems and/or processes. Cooperation between the agents typically is based on communication via transmitting messages following various interaction and negotiation scenarios and/or protocols.
With ever shorter product life-cycles, decreasing product launch times, and increasing product variety, conventional manufacturing processes need to provide more product flexibility and higher volume scalability while maintaining high product quality and low manufacturing costs. Agent technology is well suited to addressing the control aspects of these manufacturing requirements. As autonomous decision-makers, agents are able to dynamically react to unforeseen events, exploit different capabilities of components, and/or adapt flexibly to changes in their environment. The ability of agents to adapt their behavior at run-time reduces the need for the designer to foresee possible scenarios and changes that the system will encounter; agents can automatically adapt to changing products or varying volumes.
Although RFID technology can be utilized to facilitate agent-based control systems, there is a need to provide improved techniques to integrate this technology with such control systems.